Results for: homeopathy
Risks Associated With Complementary And Alternative Medicine (CAM): A Brief Overview
Having grown up on a dairy farm, I am one of the least likely people to object to the deification of yogurt. However, as a critical thinker, I cannot help but resist the idea (promoted by some health sites) that probiotics are a reasonable alternative to chemotherapy in the treatment of colon cancer. And there are many other equally unhelpful claims being...
When what to my wondering eyes should appear….
…but an actual pro-science post at The Huffington Post in which the blogger, Jacob Dickerman, actually correctly describes why homeopathy is quackery! For instance: Homeopaths will tell us that water has a memory. That it vibrates in a certain way and thus knows exactly what the homeopath put into it. The thing is, if Hahnemann is somehow right about homeopathy, then it...
Chiropractic in the News
Three recent news items about chiropractic have particularly irritated me. (1) U.S. Army Brigadier General Becky Halstead (Retired) Speaks Out for Chiropractic Care (2) Chiropractic Helps Child with Brain Disorder (3) Swine Flu Chiropractor’s Handout (1) General Halstead has become a spokesperson for The Foundation for Chiropractic Progress, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing public awareness of chiropractic. Her quoted comments boil...
Threats to science-based medicine: Big pharma pays a publisher to produce a fake journal
It’s times like these when I’m happy that I haven’t published in too many Elsevier Journals during the course of my career. Actually, I’m not sure if I’ve ever published in an Elsevier journal, although I have reviewed manuscripts for them. In any case, I say that because on Thursday, it was revealed that pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme paid Elsevier...
The Huffington Post‘s War on Medical Science: A Brief History
I realize that our fearless leader Steve Novella has already written about this topic twice. He has, as usual, done a bang-up job of describing how Arianna Huffington’s political news blog has become a haven for quackery, even going so far as to entitle his followup post The Huffington Post’s War on Science. And he’s absolutely right. The Huffington Post has waged...
Homeocracy II
This is the second installment analysis of a three (and now 4) part series of articles on effects of homeopathy on childhood diarrhea. This second installment elaborates on our findings on data from the second clinical trial in Nicaragua. (1) I should first explain the title. In order for homeopathy to operate as a base or operating system for medicine “for the 21st...
Human subjects protections and research ethics: Where the rubber hits the road for science-based medicine
Although clinical trials are science, they often can't be controlled as well as experiments in most branches of science. The reason is that the experimental subjects are human, and ethics demands that risks and harms be minimized and benefits maximized.
14 Studies Later*
First off, I have deliberately not read the entries on Fourteen Studies by fellow bloggers on SBM. I wanted to go through the information on the site myself. So if some of the information is repetitive, sorry. Second, in the interest of openness and transparency, I will state my conflicts of interest up front: none. I have not talked to a drug...
Mathematically modeling why quackery persists
It’s often puzzled me (and, I daresay, many other skeptics and boosters of science- and evidence-based medicine) why various forms of quackery and woo that have either about as close to zero prior probability as you can get and/or have failed to show evidence greater than placebo in clinical trials manage to retain so much traction among the public. Think homeopathy. Think...
Harvard Medical School: Veritas for Sale (Part V)
September 26, 2002 Kimball Atwood, M.D. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Dear Kim, I have now had time to look into the allegations in your letter of June 14th which, incidentally, I shared with Dr. David Eisenberg and he with several others. I have sought consultation about our exchanges and the gist of my response follows. Some of your concerns and allegations are very helpful and...